Tree Houses
Wills
1957
This book was weeded from a local collection. The book was tired looking and was outdated and hadn’t left the shelf in decades. I was curious about the author and found out that Royal Barry Wills was an architect and was pretty influential. His work was mostly in New England and was considered to be the master of the Cape Cod style.
Considering this was geared to children, the text was more complex and instructions weren’t easy to follow. I think this is more a vanity project, given the author’s credentials. This is not to say this book doesn’t have worth. I am sure that architecture geeks would say this is worth keeping. That may be true, but it still doesn’t belong in a modern youth nonfiction collection. This is something for consideration in a specialty collection or an archive. Again, archival and preservation projects are usually outside the scope and budget of the average public library.
Collection objectives and the library mission statement are important for librarians to revisit time and again. Youth collections are for children. I doubt that most kids would care that a world class architect wrote a book about building a tree house.
Mary
K
Mind you, a world-class architect who was dead by the time their parents (and quite possibly their grandparents!) were even born.
The cover tree house hardly looks worth building. A platform 8 feet off the ground on top of a dead stump?
Architecture library in here! Also in New England. I had no idea Wills did a children’s book. We don’t have it in our collection and this is very interesting! But, you’re right you do not need to keep that.
Um, “work work”? Should that be “wood work”?
No, just work. Evidently, I typed it twice. Fixed. I am the WORST proofreader. 🙂
If he was an architect, where he put his seal> Should have a license # somewhere too… (Am being a pedant.)
Second thought: Is really geared to children? I could look at this and imagine making a “three-tree house” as a boy, which the illustrations show.
I want to read this book…
You may be right that it was in the wrong section of the wrong library (the architecture section of a university library is probably a better fit)
The second-hand copy of this on Amazon is currently priced at $220. I hope you sold it rather than throwing it in the bin.